Saudi Arabia: Cyber attack aimed at oil, gas flow

'Thank God they were not able to achieve their goals'

(NYTIMES) — Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Aramco, said on Sunday that a cyberattack against it in August that damaged some 30,000 computers was aimed at stopping oil and gas production in Saudi Arabia, the biggest exporter in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The attack on Saudi Aramco — which supplies a tenth of the world’s oil — failed to disrupt production, but was one of the most destructive hacker strikes against a single business.

“The main target in this attack was to stop the flow of oil and gas to local and international markets and thank God they were not able to achieve their goals,” Abdullah al-Saadan, Aramco’s vice president for corporate planning, said on Al Ekhbariya television. It was Aramco’s first comments on the apparent aim of the attack.